There is something special developing at Gillette Stadium this season, where the New England Revolution are now unbeaten in their last 12 regular-season home games, dating back to last season, tying a club record
With the 4-0 win over Real Salt Lake on Saturday night, in front of 17,982 fans, New England moved into first place in the Eastern Conference with a 4-2-2 record for 14 points.
In any salary cap sport, developing a strong squad is extremely difficult, but the Rev have arguably the deepest squad in MLS with 15 or 16 players challenging for a starting role every week.
Against RSL, the Revs substitutes included Jose Goncalves, Kevin Alston, Kelyn Rowe and Diego Fagundez, neither of who could break into a strong starting XI.
This squad strength will come into play during the summer when Jermain Jones, Lee Nguyen and Juan Agudelo are expected to be called up by Jurgen Klinsmann for this summer’s Gold Cup. Add in Fagundez, who is expected to play for Uruguay in the U20 World Cup, and the stars are aligned for another Revs summer swoon, an annual tradition under Jay Heaps.
The Revs have top quality players who can come in and replace those called away on international duty, something that Heaps alluded too in his post game press conference where he was asked about
how goals are coming from different places:
“That’s how we want to be built. I don’t think we’re a team that’s going to have that 25 goal scorer, like teams in the past. I think we’re a balanced attack. I’ve talked about it from the beginning. I think that’s the way we need to function, where we have different players scoring different ways and for me, that’s the most difficult. When I was playing and there was a player, that if you shut one guy down you felt like you could win the game. I hope the teams that come in and play against us feel that they have to stop two or three or four guys because if they try to stop just those guys, someone else is going to beat you.”
The Revolution will be back at home next weekend when they host the New York Red Bulls on Saturday, May 2 in a match between two of the best teams in the Eastern Conference.
